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Staff

David H. Mortimer is the President and a Trustee of The American Assembly, a national, non-partisan, and public affairs forum founded by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950 and affiliated with Columbia University. Before joining The Assembly, he worked at Kuhn-Loeb & Co., an investment bank. At The Assembly, Mr. Mortimer has overseen more than eighty national projects on domestic and international topics. He was also responsible for several books publishing arrangements. He has been involved in every aspect of the planning, implementation, and follow-up of 100 regional

Joe Karaganis is Vice President of The American Assembly. His work focuses on the regulation of the knowledge economy, and has recently included research on intermediary liability, broadband adoption, and media piracy. He also directs the Open Syllabus Project. Prior to joining the American Assembly, he was a Program Director at the Social Science Research Council.

His publications include Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (2011), Copy Culture in the US and Germany (2013), and Shadow Libraries (2018). Mr. Karaganis’s other

Nicholas Hamilton is the Director of The American Assembly’s Cities program. There, he works closely with city leaders, researchers, and civil society groups across the country to develop more equitable, sustainable, and economically vibrant communities. He has directed The Assembly’s projects on legacy cities, including theLegacy Cities Partnership, a national coalition working to revitalize US legacy cities.

Mr. Hamilton’s past work for Davis Brody Bond, an architecture firm, includes the

Stephanie Sung is the Deputy Director of The American Assembly's urban policy program. Her work focuses on governance and civic capacity issues of older industrial cities. Previously, Stephanie worked at NYU's Wagner Innovation Labs, part of a consortium under the White House Council for Strong Cities and Strong Communities (SC2) initiative to provide targeted technical assistance to economically distressed communities. She also worked as an analyst with New York City Mayor's Office of Management and Budget,

Karla Garcia is the Chief Financial Officer at The American Assembly. She is responsible for all financial activity at The Assembly and additionally serves as program coordinator for various projects. Ms. Garcia has previously held several positions at Columbia University, as financial assistant at the business office of Columbia’s School of Law and as a restricted funds specialist at Columbia’s Office of the Controller, among others.

Mark Leneker is the program coordinator of The American Assembly. He joined The Assembly in 2003, after leaving an administrative assistant position at The Institute for Democracy Studies.

Prior to this career change, Mr. Leneker worked as an agent assistant at the commercial talent agency Schiffman, Ekman, Morrison, and Marx and an administrative assistant at Chesky Records in New York City. As a performer, he has worked off-Broadway at The Actors Playhouse and Grove Street Theater, and also appeared regionally at

Bee Vang is the Communications Assistant at The American Assembly. He joined The Assembly in early 2018. Mr. Vang has developed workshops in the US and China concerning media, Asian American history, and racial and social justice. Additionally, he has also pursued activism around domestic and urban policy, food justice, agriculture, and development through research endeavors, grassroots organizing, and international traveling to China and Hong Kong.

He has held other professional positions at various organizations such as The Economist, First Look Media, the International Leadership Foundation (ILF), the